No one is in jail, yet, and we don't even have lists of the brokers at these firms who originated so much criminal bogus debt.
We had to wait for a bankruptcy court report to find out how and why Lehman brothers collapsed in detail ... did the U.S. Congress do 250+ interviews to get to the bottom of the matter?Clearing banks were partly responsible - did they take advantage to force competition out of the market, to receive assets at fire-sale prices?
The Fed and the SEC were inside Lehman for months before it fell. How much did they know about the true liquidity position of the firm?
Meanwhile, the cost of this recession is going to be measured in the trillions of dollars, in lost output and lost tax revenue and outright stimulus debt-spending. No one is in jail, yet, and we don't even have lists of the brokers at these firms who originated so much bogus debt. Indeed, the ability to even research who, when, and how much is fading with the passage of time, quite possibly.
Loan loss severity on subprime debt in the tri-state area (the average loss is now at 70% of the total value of the loans advanced, and the graph implies that collateral value behind loans in the event of foreclosure is trending toward zero):
